A memory, such as a random access memory (RAM), is a form of data storage. The memory may have an array of blocks addressable using address bits to access the blocks during a reading or writing operation. A RAM allows data to be accessed in any random order.
In radar applications, by way of example, large amounts of data are written into a memory in an interleaved manner. This data must be de-interleaved before being fed to Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) accelerators, and then the data must be reordered again prior to a second stage of FFT processing. Data is organized in an array of memory blocks in an interleaved manner along its dimensions.
The memory is generally accessed using a direct memory access (DMA) controller having an address counter that jumps a programmable jump width of, for example, 2, 4, or 8 bytes, in the memory address space. This access method is disadvantageous in that it normally does not a permit burst access in which data is transferred in one contiguous sequence. Instead, multiple processing cycles are required to complete a reading or writing operation.